The Week in Cartoons, Annotated on up the White House roof...

What was he doing up there?

Oh, I don’t care what he was doing up there. I really do not.

Probably looking for a good spot to demolish the East Wing. Perhaps he’s considering gilding it. Yes, I will do a cartoon on this, but not today.

Let’s look back on the week and see what we got.

There’s this:

This is a little quick, but it turned out fine.

I had been puzzling over this idea for a few days prior, and I also struggled over just how big to make the scoreboard, and whether or not it should be a baseball scoreboard. I decided to throw out the high and the low (that’s kind of a math phrase), and went with football, mostly because it was simpler. These are the things we ponder during our cartooning fever dreams. Ideally, I might have spent a little more time on the details, but I had something happen to me, and it’s very painful.

It’s called “Dirty Brush Disorder”, and it really messes up my line when it happens. I ran out of brushes the other day, and so I had to stick with this beat up Princeton SNAP! Number 6 and gut it out until the new brushes get here.

Now, in the olden days (a few months ago), I managed to avoid using Amazon to order art materials. I went to University Art in Midtown, where I knew most of the people who worked there, and they were all very nice people. Then the manager, who is a great lady, told me the bad news: my art store of 12 years was closing, and fast.

Hello, Amazon. Again.

Ordering art supplies online is something I do not like to do, because I could always test out new stuff and have a pleasant chitchat with the staff, mostly about subjects other than ink drag and my damaged brushes. Ink drag is when I leave the top of my ink bottle, and it gets gooey and thick, making it tough to hold the line. Honestly, this happened all week. This week, I just went to manual override and drew several cartoons with a Uniball Micro. It’s more efficient, even if I don’t get the line quality I want.

Don’t worry, I got the new brushes. Thank you for subscribing to my mind-numbing tedium. Let’s look at another cartoon to wake you up.

I did this almost entirely with the Uniball Micro. Looked OK, and it also has the corollary effect of slowing me down in my drawing a bit, which isn’t a bad thing. If the lines looked a little weak, I would just hit them with the paint bucket tool, intensify the lines, and call it good. I also do this with the brush drawings, in case they needed a little more punch. I’ll also hit the lettering that way, too, so the letters pop.

I had to laugh, very hard, when I saw this story.

Look, a lot of people are out of shape. I could lose 5-10 pounds myself (hey, we had a pandemic, and they delivered cookies, and…and…and…) and am currently dieting. Again. But Trump calling for fitness is doubly risible because he says crazy stuff like you have a fixed number of heartbeats, and you don’t want to waste them on exercise.

Thanks, nephew of a MIT professor. We were wondering. Oh, and he’s a conspicuous McDonald’s consumer. Doesn’t he know that McDonald’s is a Sadness Food to be consumed in private? We don’t confess McDonald’s consumption in public. Plus, they do have solid coffee.

Look, not even JFK really was in great physical condition, given his back and Addison’s Disease. He was naturally skinny, which helps, and he was certainly a natural athlete (he was a 10 handicap golfer, which he was eager not to publicize—imagine). But this is just too much.

Next, pls.

Kind of quick, again.

One of the hardest things for a cartoonist to draw is a map. I actually freehanded the outline of Texas in this, which is probably the most stressful event of my week. I’m sure it’s a little off. I used to download maps, copy them, and blow them up or down depending on my need. Then I would use my light table to trace it.

I can’t find two of my light tables, and the third one is broken. It was Rex Babin’s drawing table from The Bee, and where I happened to be sitting when I found out I won the Pulitzer (you may have heard). It’s really nice; it’s a custom, adjustable behemoth that one of the Bee carpenters made for him, as well as all the cabinetry in that now-gone office (I hear it’s going to be leveled and turned into mixed use condos). Imagine a newspaper that had carpenters. The Oregonian had six of them, I think, and they were all very talented and interesting guys.

Goodbye to all that.

When I’m doing something quick, I lean into the the quickness, making lines more raggedy (I swear this isn’t a justification). I should probably continue to lean into the looseness of it, too, if I can. The next cartoon will be one that you can’t do loose. You’ll see why.

Naturally, I hesitated a bit when I got this idea.

Then I didn’t.

This is a tough perspective to draw on deadline, and you can see that it’s a bit off on the parallel lines (deadline), but readers will just scan it and move on. Close enough. I wonder how many times I’ve written “close enough” when describing my work to you YBs?

Let’s focus on the positive, Mr. You-Want-The-Worst-Case-Scenario Minnesotan. It’s fine. I went and looked at photos of the fence posts, hit them pretty well, and I liked the walking figures. If you can believe this, I still kinda struggle with anatomy at age 64.987. I also had to get the White House in the background to really make it work, but, obviously, the WH is way further back from the fence than this. Naturally, unless you’re an architect (I always say architects are cartoonists who are good at math), you’re not going to be too hard on me.

The reason I hesitated a bit on the cartoon idea was that Trump was convicted in civil case, not a criminal case. He is, therefore, a convicted sex offender, and he still hasn’t quite written that check to E. Jean Carroll, last I heard. I have also heard the term “adjudicated rapist” in reference to this case.

So I drew it.

The redistricting story is huge nationally, and here in the fourth largest world economy.

I had a hell of a time getting an idea going on this subject, given I had been thinking about it for a week. The worst thing that can happen during my work week is to have the mentality that I have the Sunday cartoon knocked. By Thursday morning, I was nowhere.

Nowhere.

Oh, I talked to my son off and on for an hour about it, and sometimes he doesn’t come up with the “idea” so much as the approach to the idea. My ideas are my ideas (I rarely, if ever, use suggested ideas), but talking through ideas will get me there on my own power. I liken it to getting a jump for my car battery—I need help getting the engine to turn over. In this case, my son said, you should label the districts by who lives in them.

Duh.

He also reminded me of one of my main skillsets, which is small phrases. The other is microscopic knowledge of the Kennedy Administration.

Anyway, you remind me to go buy new ink and brushes.

Have a great week and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

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Hey, YBs! : It’s hotter than a two dollar pistol, in the words of my father, so I am going to lay low in the shade for the day. Have a fun afternoon and evening. As always, I am grateful to all of you for your attention and support. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! (Why does he do this?)—J.